Page 14 of Hooked by a Hero (Tales from the Brotherhood #4)
Elias shifted from looking straight forward to watching the interaction. As he did, something like a shimmer in the air or a wave of humidity passed over the far end of the line. He blinked, wondering if he was seeing things.
“Not a single tasty morsel in sight,” Dick said, disappointed, moving on to Hunt at the end of the line. “You don’t know anything about that, I’m sure.”
Elias nearly gasped in shock. Dick walked right past the women without recognizing them.
“They leapt over the side once your lot took over,” Hunt lied. “They decided they would rather die than be at your mercy.”
Dick looked outraged for a moment, then he turned back to glare at Elias and Caspian. “It’s been too long since I’ve dipped my wick,” he said, grabbing his crotch. “If I can’t have a woman, maybe one of those filthy sodomites will do.”
Outrage hit Elias before any sort of fear. How dare the blackguard think he had a right to anyone’s person?
“Dick! Get down here!” Tumbrill shouted, ending whatever confrontation might have happened before it began.
Dick muttered something, then marched back down the line of shaking passengers to where Tumbrill stood near the main mast. He was surrounded by a mixed complement of sailors and convicts, all of whom seemed ready to take orders from him. The only one who didn’t quickly bow to him was Dick.
“What do you want?” Dick demanded of him.
“There will be time for games later,” Tumbrill said. “Our first order of business is to account for passengers and crew and assign them all duties.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to keep them locked below, like they did to us?” one of the convicts asked.
A few of the others growled and nodded in agreement.
Tumbrill shook his head. “We lost too many men in the storm. We need every pair of hands left to repair the damage the ship sustained and to help us reach the nearest port.”
“What do you mean reach the nearest port?” Dick demanded, hands planted on his hips. “I thought the whole point of this was to sail away to lush, tropical lands with Ferrars’s treasure so that we might live like kings for the rest of our days.”
Several of the convicts chuckled and grunted in agreement.
“That is the point,” Tumbrill said stiffly. “That is the entire point of this endeavor. Which is why we should turn to sail northward for Cape Colony. The port of Durban should be directly to our north.”
“Er, I think not,” one of the sailors said hesitantly. “We’re well past Cape Colony.”
“How would you know?” Dick snapped at him, making the man jerk back in fear. “At any rate,” Dick went on, facing Tumbrill, “I’ve no wish to land in Cape Colony. What do they have there but dirt and darkies? I want to go somewhere with real wealth. Somewhere like Hindustan.”
Elias went rigid in offence at Dick’s characterization of the people of Cape Colony. He was clearly as ignorant of the people of the world as he was vicious.
“Hindustan is another month or two away,” Tumbrill argued, scrubbing a hand over his face. Elias began to see how exhausted the man truly was. “Durban could be less than a week from here.”
“Durban is controlled by the Crown,” Dick argued. “We’ll be caught and strung up if we show ourselves there. Hindustan belongs to the East India Company. We can bargain with them. They understand money.”
Elias blinked at Dick’s surprisingly sound logic. They were more likely to be found out by British authorities in Cape Colony than in Hindustan, or at least parts of it. The trick was reaching Hindustan in one piece, especially with the damage that had been done to the ship and its diminished crew.
But instead of arguing, Tumbrill sighed again and rubbed his forehead with both hands.
“I’ve no wish to argue with you,” he told Dick, eyes squeezed shut as if he had a headache.
“At any rate, we’re at the mercy of the wind and sea for the moment.
Sails must be repaired, the hull must be checked, and the injured should be treated. ”
Elias’s ears perked at that statement. It was bittersweet to know that he was not expendable during a time when the lives and fates of everyone on board might be in question.
“As long as I get my treasure in the end, I could not care less what happens to this Fortune ,” Dick said, then laughed at his own joke. Several of the others laughed with him, though more than a few seemed to be laughing out of obligation.
“Assess the passengers,” Tumbrill said, coming out of whatever exhausted stupor he had found himself in for a moment. “Make an account of who is still here and who was lost. Assign the survivors tasks. We’ll discuss our course from here once we know what we’re capable of.”
Dick and the others seemed content to follow that order, though Elias most certainly had the feeling that Dick would only obey the orders he agreed with. Mutinies were one thing, but it was difficult to govern men who had an inclination to rebel against orders they did not like.
Elias’s attention turned to the men who walked up and down the line of passengers, checking their names off against a register that one of them carried. Elias was surprised that any of the mutineers could read, but there always seemed to be at least one educated man in every crowd of rabblerousers.
“You’re the doctor,” the man with the register said when he reached Elias.
Elias glanced briefly to Caspian for support, then answered, “I am.”
The man with the register nodded. “Captain Tumbrill’s head has been bothering him since it was hit by a pulley yesterday. Go treat him.”
Again, Elias glanced to Caspian.
“Don’t look at him, go treat the captain,” the register man snapped.
“Go,” Caspian whispered, touching Elias’s arm. “I will have a care for things here.”
Elias nodded at him, and though he hated parting from the one person he felt as though he could bind his soul to forever, especially under such worrisome circumstances, he stepped out of line and made his way down to the stern, where Tumbrill had found a barrel to sit on.
“Can I help?” he asked, wary of disturbing the man who held his life and the lives of all the passengers in his hands.
Tumbrill sent him a vile look at first, but his pain was greater than his revulsion. “I sustained a blow to the head during the storm,” he said.
“Where?” Elias asked as cooly as he could.
“Here,” Tumbrill said, turning slightly and resting a hand on the back of his head briefly.
“May I?” Elias asked, reaching toward him.
Tumbrill nodded, but the motion seemed to cause him more pain.
As Elias set to work examining the large knot on the back of Tumbrill’s head, Dick swaggered closer to them.
“Developing a taste for that sort of sod?” he snorted, lip curling into what might have been a smile as he stared at Tumbrill.
“Of course not. Do not be ridiculous,” Tumbrill snapped.
Surprisingly, Dick let the matter go. “So Hindustan it is?” he asked. “All them beautiful women in their colorful clothes? I saw some in London once. Sweet as molasses they were.”
“Hindustan is too far away,” Tumbrill argued wearily. “Without Cox, there’s no telling if we’ll reach there before our supplies run out.”
“What does Cox have to do with anything?” Dick asked, jerking back in surprise. “He was a right sop, he was.”
“He was our navigator,” Tumbrill said seriously.
Elias tensed. His examination of Tumbrill’s head had told him all he needed to know, that the man was concussed, but he stayed where he was to be privy to the conversation.
“Don’t all you naval sorts know how to navigate?” Dick asked, showing signs of worry for the first time.
Tumbrill sighed. “I was never very good at it,” he confessed. “Cox was the expert.”
Dick’s worry grew. “So how do we get the ship pointed the right way ’round?”
Tumbrill didn’t have a ready answer, so Elias stepped in.
“Caspian could navigate,” he said, coming up with the plan in the moment. “He’s traveled all over the world and knows the ocean in the way most people know their home village. I’m certain he said he has served as a ship’s navigator in the past as well.”
Both Tumbrill and Dick looked at him like they were trying to decide whether to believe him or throw him over the side.
“Bring the man here,” Tumbrill ordered a timid crewman who had been hovering nearby, listening in.
“Yes, sir,” the man said and shot off up the deck.
“You had better not be lying,” Tumbrill warned Elias.
Elias finished his examination and gave his diagnosis of a concussion, telling Tumbrill to rest and be still as much as he could for the next few days, as Caspian was fetched. As soon as Caspian was brought over and asked whether he knew how to navigate a ship, Elias knew he’d said the right thing.
“I can take us to Hindustan,” Caspian said, looking excited at the prospect. “Once I determine where we are, it should be an easy thing to sail straight there.”
“Then I hereby declare you the ship’s navigator,” Dick said, as though he were handing out positions for a schoolyard battle.
“I will do my best,” Caspian said with a smile.
He turned that smile on Elias, who saw more in the expression than an agreement to do Dick’s bidding. Caspian truly did know where he was positioned on the sea at any time. If any man could rescue them from the situation they had fallen into, it was him.